Dr. Folasade Femi-Lawal
Chairman of the Board
Mastercard
Dr. Folasade Femi-Lawal has built a distinguished career by combining financial expertise, technology, strategic thinking, and a strong understanding of business needs. With more than 30 years of experience across banking, digital payments, telecommunications, management consulting, and business advisory, she has consistently focused on solving complex problems and creating measurable value. Her journey reflects how financial services can support not only business growth but also wider economic development.
CIO Global is pleased to spotlight Dr. Folasade Femi-Lawal in this edition, celebrating a notable contribution to leadership, innovation, and industry progress.
Her professional career began in audit and business advisory at PwC, followed by credit risk experience at UBA. She later moved into telecommunications with Airtel Nigeria, where she worked on business performance and strategy for a $2 billion business serving 17 million customers. This experience gave her valuable exposure to managing performance, strategy, and growth within a large and complex organization.
Character sustains professional trust.
Folasade Femi-Lawal subsequently spent 11 years at FirstBank, where she led the Cards and Messaging business. During this period, she grew the cards business into a ₦20 billion gross revenue franchise, with more than 11 million cards and over 30% of Nigeria’s industry card transaction volume and value. She also played an important role in advancing digital banking and financial inclusion initiatives.
Her career is strongly connected to her early understanding of entrepreneurship and finance. Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, she was inspired by her late grandmother, who successfully managed her business while maintaining disciplined and auditable financial records. This early exposure helped her appreciate the importance of financial management and eventually led her to pursue accounting and financial services.
Over the years, her motivation has developed beyond finance itself. She has been driven by the opportunity to solve meaningful problems and build solutions that create lasting value. Her experience across credit, risk, banking, payments, telecommunications, and financial inclusion has allowed her to understand how capital, technology, and financial infrastructure can work together to support individuals, businesses, and economies.
Three principles have remained central to her leadership approach: integrity, accountability, and continuous learning. She believes trust is fundamental to financial services and that leaders must remain consistent in their principles, particularly when facing difficult decisions. Accountability, in her view, means taking ownership of outcomes rather than simply responsibilities. Continuous learning has also helped her successfully transition across industries and adapt to changing business environments.
People development is another important part of her leadership philosophy. Folasade Femi-Lawal believes sustainable leadership should extend beyond individual achievements. For her, effective leadership means developing capable people, strengthening institutions, and creating systems that continue to deliver value even after a leader moves on.
Her ability to adapt has been particularly important as financial services have evolved from traditional banking toward mobile banking, agency banking, digital payments, and technology-driven financial services. She approaches transformation by first understanding the customer and the problem rather than focusing on technology alone. She views technology as an enabler that becomes valuable when it helps organizations serve customers better, operate more efficiently, or create new opportunities.
At FirstBank, this approach contributed to the development and scaling of digital banking solutions. One example was the rapid evolution of Firstmobile, where self-activation was introduced within three months of launch, improving the customer experience. At Mastercard, she continues to work within a rapidly changing payments environment, focusing on new payment models, partnerships, and market opportunities across West Africa.
Technology creates value by solving real problems.
Financial inclusion has also been a significant part of her career. Through the Firstmonie Financial Inclusion strategy, she worked on expanding financial services beyond traditional branches. A UNICEF and Federal Government disbursement programme helped deliver ₦880 million to 20,000 rural women across 536 wards and 82 Local Government Areas. The initiative provided practical evidence that financial services could reach underserved communities and contributed to securing a $12 million Gates Foundation grant to support the nationwide expansion of the Firstmonie network.
At Mastercard, Folasade Femi-Lawal serves as Country Manager and Area Business Head, West Africa, leading a multi-market business covering revenue, market development, regulatory engagement, partnerships, and people leadership. Her first year as Country Manager delivered 24% year-on-year revenue growth and the region’s highest revenue in four years, according to the achievements highlighted in her professional profile.
She has also been involved in several initiatives designed to expand the digital payments ecosystem. These include the launch of the fully domestic Naira-denominated Naija Card, Credit as a Service, which provided credit access to more than 700,000 civil servants and NYSC members through partnerships with Allawee, Providus Bank, and Remita, and Masterlink, a platform focused on improving digital payment infrastructure and ecosystem integration across West Africa.
Looking ahead, Folasade Femi-Lawal sees digital payments, artificial intelligence, data-driven decision-making, partnerships, regulation, and meaningful financial inclusion as important forces shaping the future of finance. She believes AI can improve customer experience, risk management, decision-making, and operational efficiency when supported by strong governance, security, and human judgement.
Her advice to aspiring finance professionals is straightforward: build depth before chasing titles, remain curious, seek experiences that stretch capabilities, and build relationships based on trust and value. She also emphasizes integrity, believing that professional reputation grows over time and that character is essential to sustaining trust.
As she looks to the future, Folasade Femi-Lawal wants to continue contributing at the intersection of financial services, technology, business growth, and institutional leadership across Africa. She also remains committed to mentoring the next generation of leaders. For her, a meaningful legacy is not measured only by businesses grown or financial results delivered, but also by the institutions strengthened, people developed, and opportunities created along the way.
Leadership should leave behind capable people.